Away out on the high mesas that are much like the desert below, except
that the nights are cool and the wind is not fanned out of a furnace,
Casey fought sand and brush and rocks and found a trail now and then which
he followed thankfully, and so came at last to a short range of mountains
whose name matched well their inhospitable stare. The Starvation Mountains
had always been reputed rich in mineral and malevolent in their attitude
toward man and beast. Even the Joshua trees stood afar off and lifted
grotesque arms defensively against them. But Casey was not easily daunted,
and eerie places held for him no meaning save the purely material one. If
he could find water and the rich vein of ore some one had told him was
there, then Casey would be happy in spite of snakes, tarantulas and
sinister stories of the place.
Water he found, not too far up a gulch. So he pitched his tent within
carrying distance from the spring, thanked the god of mechanics that an
automobile neither eats nor drinks when it does not work, and set out to
find his fortune.
Casey knew there was a mining camp on the high slope of Barren Butte. He
knew the name of the camp, which was Lucky Lode, and he knew the foreman
there--knew him from long ago in the days when Casey was what he himself
confessed to be wild. In reaching Starvation Mountains, Casey had driven
for fifteen miles within plain sight of Lucky Lode. But gas is precious
when you are a hundred miles from a garage, and since business did not
take him there Casey did not drive up the five-mile hill to the Lucky Lode
just to shake hands with the foreman and swap a yarn or two. Instead, he
headed down on to the bleached, bleak oval of Furnace Lake and forged
across it as straight as he could drive toward Starvation Mountains.
But the next time Casey made the trip--needing supplies, powder, fuse,
caps and so on--Fate took him by the ear and led him to a lady. This is
how Fate did it,--and I will say it was an original idea:
Casey had a gallon syrup can in the car which he used for extra oil for
the engine. Having an appetite for sour-dough biscuits and syrup, he had
also a gallon can of syrup in the car. It was a terrifically hot day, and
the wind that blew full against Casey's left cheek as he drove burned even
his leather skin where it struck. Casey was afraid he was running short of
water, and a Ford's comfort comes first,--as every man knows; so that
Casey was parched pretty thoroughly, inside and out. Within a mile of
Furnace Lake he stopped, took an unsatisfying sip from his big canteen and
emptied the rest of the water into the radiator. Then he replenished the
oil in the motor generously, cranked and went bumping along down the trail
worn rough with the trucks from Lucky Lode.
For a little way he jounced along the trail; then the motor began to
labor; and although Casey pulled the gas lever down as far as it would go,
the car slowed and stopped dead in the road. After an hour of fruitless
monkey-wrenching and swearing and sweating, Casey began to suspect
something. He examined both cans, "hefted" them, smelt and even tasted the
one half-empty, and decided that Ford auty-_mo_-biles do not require two
quarts of syrup at one dose. He thought that a little syrup ought not to
make much difference, but half a gallon was probably too much.
He put in more oil on top of the syrup, but he could not even move the
crank, much less "turn 'er over." So long as a man can wind the crank of a
Ford he seems able to keep alive his hopes. Casey could not crank,
wherefore he knew himself beaten even while he heaved and lifted and
swore, and strained every muscle in his back lifting again. He got so
desperately wrathful that he lifted the car perceptibly off its right
front wheel with every heave, but he felt as if he were trying to lift a
boulder.
It was past supper time at Lucky Lode when Casey arrived, staggering a
little with exhaustion, both mental and physical. His eyes were bloodshot
with the hot wind, his face was purple from the same wind, his lips were
dry and rough. I cannot blame the men at Lucky Lode for a sudden thirst
when they saw him coming, and a hope that he still had a little left. And
when he told them that he had filled his engine with syrup instead of oil,
what would any one think?
Their unjust suspicions would not have worried Casey in the least, had
Lucky Lode not possessed a lady cook who was a lady. She was a widow with
two children, and she had the children with her and held herself aloof
from the men in a manner befitting a lady. Casey was hungry and thirsty
and tired, and, as much as was possible to his nature, disgusted, with
life in general. The widow gave him a smile of sympathy which went
straight to his heart, and hot biscuits and coffee and beans cooked the
way he liked them best. These went straight to ease the gnawing emptiness
of his stomach, and being a man who took his emotions at their face value,
he jumped to the conclusion that it was the lady whose presence gave him
the glow.
Casey stayed that night and the next day and the next at Lucky Lode. The
foreman helped him tow the syruppy car up the hill to the machine shop
where he could get at it, and Casey worked until night trying to remove
the dingbats from the hootin'annies,--otherwise, the pistons from the
cylinders. The foreman showed him what to do, and Casey did it, using a
"double-jack" and a lot of energy.
Before he left the Lucky Lode, Casey knew exactly what syrup will do to a
Ford if applied internally, and the widow had promised to marry him if he
would stop drinking and smoking and swearing. Since Casey had not been
drunk in ten years on account of having seen a big yellow snake with a
green head on the occasion of his last carouse, he took the drinking
pledge quite cheerfully for her sake. He promised to stop smoking, glad
that the widow neglected to mention chewing tobacco, which was his
everyday comfort. As for the swearing, he told her he would do his best
under the circumstances, and that he would taste the oil hereafter, and
try and think up some new names for the Ford.
"But Casey, if you leave whisky alone, you won't need to taste the oil,"
the widow told him. Whereat Casey grinned feebly and explained for the
tenth time that he had not been drinking. She did not contradict him. She
seemed a wise woman, after a fashion.
Casey drove back to his camp at Starvation Mountain happy and a little
scared. Why, after all these years of careless freedom, he should
precipitate himself into matrimony with a woman he had known casually for
two days puzzled him a little.
"Well, a man gits to feelin' like he wants to settle down when he's
crowdin' fifty," he explained his recklessness to the Ford as it hummed
away over Furnace Lake which was flat as a floor and dry as a bleached
bone,--and much the same color. "Any man feels the want of a home as he
gits older. And Casey's the man that will try anything once, you ask
anybody." He took out his pipe, looked at it, bethought himself of his
promise and put it away again, substituting a chew of tobacco as large as
his cheek would hold without prying his mouth open. "G'long, there--can't
you? You got your belly full of oil--shake a wheel and show you're alive."
After that, Casey spent every Sunday at Lucky Lode. He liked the widow
better and better. Especially after dinner, with the delicious flavor of
pie still caressing his palate. Only he wished she would take it for
granted that when Casey Ryan made a promise, Casey Ryan would keep it.
"I've got so now I can bark a knuckle with m'single-jack when I'm puttin'
down a hole, and say, 'Oh, dear!' and let it go at that," he boasted to
her on the second Sunday. "I'll bet there ain't another man in the state
of Nevada could do that."
"Yes. But Casey dear, if _only_ you will never touch another drop of
liquor. You'll keep your promise, won't you, dear boy?"
"Hell, yes!" Casey assured her headily. It had been close to twenty years
since he had been called dear boy, at least to his face. He kissed the
widow full on the lips before he saw that a frown sat upon her forehead
like a section of that ridgy cardboard they wrap bottles in.
"Casey, you swore!"
"Swore? Me?"
"I only hope," sighed the widow, "that your other promise won't be broken
as easily as that one. Remember, Casey, I cannot and I will not marry a
drinking man!"
Casey looked at her dubiously. "If you mean that syrup--"
"Oh, I've heard awful tales of you, Casey dear! The boys talk at the
table, and they seem to think it's awful funny to tell about your fighting
and drinking and playing cards for money. But I think it's perfectly
awful. You _must_ stop drinking, Casey dear. I could never forgive myself
if I set before my innocent little ones the example of a husband who
drank."
"You won't," said Casey. "Not if you marry me, you won't." Then he changed
the subject, beginning to talk of his prospect over on Starvation. The
widow liked to hear him tell about finding a pocket of ore that went
seventy ounces in silver and one and seven tenths ounces in gold, and how
he expected any day to get down into the main body of ore and find it a
"contact" vein. It all sounded very convincing and as if Casey Ryan were
in a fair way to become a rich man.
The next time Casey saw the widow he was on his way to town for more
powder, his whole box of "giant" having gone off with a tremendous bang
the night before in one of those abrupt hailstorms that come so
unexpectedly in the mountain country. Casey had worked until dark, and was
dog-tired and had left the box standing uncovered beside the dugout where
he kept it. He suspected that a hailstone had played a joke on him, but
his chief emotion was one of self-congratulation because he had prudently
stored the dynamite around a shoulder of the canyon from where he camped.
When he told the widow about it as one relates the details of a narrow
escape, and pointed out how lucky he was, she looked very grave. It was a
very careless thing to do, she said. Casey admitted it was. A man who
handled dynamite ought to shun liquor above all things, she went on; and
Casey agreed restively. He had not felt any inclination, to imbibe until
that minute, when the Irish rose up hotly within him.
"Casey dear, are you _sure_ you have nothing in camp?"
Casey assured her solemnly that he had not and drove off down the hill,
vaguely aware that he was not so content with life as he had been.
"Damn that syrup!" he exploded once, quite as abruptly as had the giant
powder. After that he chewed tobacco and drove in broody silence.